What is that smell?

The house stank.

You know this smell. It meant that something had died. Where? You don’t know exactly. What you do know is that it was somewhere in your house.

It’s been almost two days since it started smelling. You and your whole family have been cleaning cupboards, shelves, and basically the whole house just to locate the source of the smell. You’ve looked in almost every nook and cranny of your house. It was unbearable. What was becoming a concerning thought was that as the days pass with no sign of you and your family ever finding the source of the smell, the more you get used to it. To just accept this situation as the norm after a few days of getting used to it is scary.

And so you continue looking.

You can’t look for it the whole day though. There was school and your parent’s had work. So the cleaning and scourging for the source of the smell took longer than expected.

Aside from the whole family actively searching for the source of the smell, there were chores to be done.

You had to feed the dwarf hamster, feed the fish, water the garden plants, and wash the dishes every Wednesday. There was homework to be done too. And every other time you had which you planned to use for relaxing, will be taken up by your mother or your father telling you to just find the source, just find the source so we can all breathe.

It was really tiring.

Also due to this inconvenient situation, most of your plans are cancelled. Sleepovers and game nights are spent looking for it. You couldn’t even invite your friends over because of the foul smell and you don’t really want them to also suffer this torture you and your whole family is suffering.

Every one of you has taken to wearing a mask.

They don’t help that much though as somehow, the rancid smell still slips through the clothing of your face mask and though the stench is now slightly bit muted, it is still there.

Your mom has used up about two air fresheners and three bottles of cleaning substance, all in hopes that it will somehow go away.

It was becoming really, really bothersome, not that it wasn’t before, but it gets worse as the days go by.

Millie, the dwarf hamster your parents got you for your birthday seems not al all bothered though. Bob, the goldfish is also unfazed by your predicament. They are just indifferent to the chaos that is happening in the house. You learned that as long as you get to feed them, they stay content.

It wasn’t the first time that you thought of how convenient it was to just be a goldfish, or just any animal in particular. You really wanted to escape this at this point in time.

Your Mom felt like there was no other choice. So, she has hired professional cleaners to clean the house.

They worked really well. The house was sparkling clean. There was not even a hint of dust inside. Everything was neatly arranged and organized. They were like a sweeping storm, that instead of bringing destruction in their wake, they put everything back in their place until the house somehow looked brand new.

 Still we weren’t satisfied. They would have got five star reviews, but they failed in the most important aspect of the cleaning of the house. They still haven’t found the source.

The foul smell was still there.

You all were really ready to give up at this point. Where was it? Where could it have been? Where is that stench really originating from?

You felt like sooner or later all of you will go crazy.

Where was it? Where really was the source of the bad smell? And what really died?

You didn’t want to say it, but as the days go by without a solution to this problem, the ideas and your imagination is starting to go wild. The conclusions you come up with go from mildly worrying to extremely horrifying. Stuff like, what if someone committed a murder in your house, and hid the body in the walls or in the floor, though it could have really just been a rat or some other animal or pest that got caught in a trap or was stuck in someplace and died, or it could still very much be a dead body hidden in your house.

You try not to think of it.

Frankly, you feel as though most of you have given up at this point.

Almost every corner of the house has been explored, almost though, and not all. You haven’t moved the heavy shelves yet or any other big and heavy furniture you have around that can’t be lifted other than by two male adults. But, most of the cupboards and shelves have been explored and are now neatly arranged right now. There was no chance of whatever died being in one of those.

The walls were also the one of last options of where to look at this point, though it was a last resort. You don’t plan on breaking your walls anytime soon, or as much as possible.

You have lost a bit of interest and even hope in this search.

The thing you were most afraid of is happening; you’ve decided to just live with it.

One day though, you parents decided it was time to check under the piano. It was really heavy and was backed up against the wall of the family room so you could kind of understand why that wasn’t the first thing they wanted to look under, especially since it would take a bit of work with the lifting and such, and unfortunately, that where you find him.

Devin was another dwarf hamster you owned. He and Millie came in a pair. He was a really naughty hamster. He kept getting himself in hilarious situations. He kept trying to escape, and in the process would get himself stuck.

A week before now, while you were cleaning their cage, Devin saw that it was a chance to finally escape. When you noticed that he was gone, a search was also conducted. Sadly, no trace of him could be found.

But he was there under the piano all along, and was unfortunately the source of the smell.

He got caught in one of those sticky rat trap pads your Dad would put out a few months back, since you had a bad case of pesky rats running around your house and nibbling on your things while everyone was sleeping.

It was such an unfortunate event.

You held a funeral that afternoon. You laid him to rest in your pet cemetery in the backyard, right beside Hopper, the frog.

The words written with white paint on a large stone which acted as his head stone read:

RIP

Devin the Hamster

Gone too soon, you will be missed.